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How Long?

There are two rules of modern life, with regards to how public debate is conducted, that are are always good to keep in mind when thinking about any issue. One is the Opposite Rule of Liberalism. Whatever the Left is howling about at the moment, imagine the opposite and you’re probably getting closer to the truth. The other rule is that cops rarely arrest a first time offender. Usually, someone caught in some sort of skulduggery has been at it for a long time. The law of averages simply caught up with them.

The first rule is an easy one, as we see with the FBI corruption case. Progressive fanatics accused the Trump people of colluding with Boris and Natasha to undermine the election, but it looks like it was the Democrats who were doing deals with foreigners in an effort to subvert the election. It’s hard to know if this is just a very elaborate cover for the Uranium One deal or simple sedition, but the FBI, CIA and at least one Democrat Congressman were willing to cut deals with the Russians for dirt on Trump.

The second rule is the one that it may be time to start pondering. What’s clear at this point in the FBI scandal is that Comey, McCabe, Strzok and Page were dirty. They cooked up a scheme to game the FISA court, so they could start rummaging around in the lives of Trump and his people. What is unknown is the complete narrative and the role of each player in the scheme. Another thing that is clear is they were exceedingly cavalier about what they were doing. Their recklessness is astonishing for people in their world.

Maybe they were just true believers who became increasingly berserk with passion for the task. Despite their titles, these people are career middle managers and this was their first taste of real action. On the other hand, the image that emerges from the texts between Strzok and Page suggests they did not see this caper as that big of a deal. There’s no trace of a guilty mind or any sense they were breaking the law. Instead, even in their cover-up efforts, you see just the bureaucrat’s concern for petty office politics.

Then there is the General Flynn issue. The whole case has been weird from the start, as Flynn is a guy thought to be a straight shooter. Yet, he gets charged with lying to the FBI, over something innocuous. Now we’re are learning the FBI and possibly Robert Mueller sandbagged Flynn, using fake FBI records to compel a guilty plea. This “new information” used by the Federal judge does not appear to have come from Mueller, but rather the Inspector General. This means Mueller is either a dupe or a crook.

Even if Mueller is just a dupe, and that seems increasingly implausible, it means he staffed his team with dirty cops from the FBI. It also means he staffed his team with dirty lawyers and political hacks from the former administration. After all, those lawyers had to be aware of what the FBI was doing to entrap Flynn. The picture emerging here is of an FBI and a DOJ stocked to the gills with people who struggle to understand the difference between a lie and the truth. It’s been a rotten precinct for at least the length of one career.

That brings us to the title of this post. How long has this sort of thing been going on and what other scandals are there? We know the Obama administration weaponized the IRS in an elaborate scheme to undermine Republican groups. We also know the whole thing was broomed by the FBI and DOJ. Knowing that those two organizations have been corrupt for a long time now puts the IRS scandal in a new light. What we may have seen was a cover-up in plain sight, with one dirty agency covering for another dirty agency.

What about the 2012 election? We know that Team Obama was very nervous about re-election after the debacle of the 2010 midterms. There were meetings immediately after to figure out how to get Obama a second term. One result was the overt use of the race card that eventually led to the plague of murders carried out by black lunatics, under the banner Black Lives Matter. How do we know the Feds were not also playing games with Team Romney. Maybe that computer crash was not just bad design after all

Then there is the one story that has never made any sense. That is the case of Judge Roberts reversing course in the ObamaCare decision. He writes an opinion striking down the individual mandate, circulates it around and then suddenly changes course and supports the mandate. It was a such a bizarre turn of events that the dissent just used his brief as the basis of the dissenting opinion. People who investigate blackmail and extortion schemes look for these sorts of anomalous changes in behavior.

One of the lessons of Watergate is that the sort of shenanigans the Nixon people were doing had become so commonplace, they were getting reckless and brazen. The Kennedy clan loved wiretapping opponents. Hoover, of course, was basically the official blackmailer of Washington. The brazen disregard for law and order by the Obama people and the Clinton people suggests a culture of corruption that started long before Strzok and Page decided to become the Bonnie and Clyde of the FBI.

After the election, one of my suggestions was that Trump set up a truth and reconciliation commission. This was a bit tongue and cheek, but not completely. The point of this commission would be to clear the air. Everyone in the government class would have a chance to come forward and admit to their crimes, in order to receive a pardon. It would allow the public to finally see the full scope of the corruption and begin the public debate over how to reform a very corrupt political class. That’s looking like a good idea now.

I’ve said it before. The FBI needs to be disbanded. The criminals will be charged, but the agency itself cannot be allowed to continue existing as an independent entity if Trump is serious about reforming the imperial bureaucracy. The creatures inhabiting the rest of the bloated alphabet soup of agencies need to see that not only individuals, but the institutions, can be held accountable for coup plotting. Make the FBI cease to exist and you send that message loud and clear.

Exactly. If you clean out that nest of vipers, there’ll be new ones in place tomorrow. This is how the human animal rolls – wherever you find power and money – you will find the corrupt hard ballers that don’t care who they have to kill to get a piece of it. There is no doubt in my mind at all that the Clintons had inconvenient people killed. The others probably did too. There is no “answer” to this; all gov’ts are corrupt to some degree. Trump, being a money man, knows this and he knows how to protect himself… Read more »

That is why it is so important to prosecute people for public corruption. In fact, an imporant outcome of these investigations likely needs to be a reform of the civil service laws to eliminate “retirement with pension” for a host of activities that ought to be prosecuted instead.

Look at all these people “retiring” at the FBI, DOJ and IRS, and you have a very quick solution to a bigger problem if we give the President the authority to pull those big fat pensions and de-bar people from public service for life.

There was recently a school shooting in Florida. Now all the leftists are going ballistic claiming we ought to completely eliminate the right to own firearms. Under their logic – if there are no firearms – there will be no more shootings.

This is the same type of logic that got applied to the Federal government when this country was founded – yet lefties can’t seem to see it , or won’t acknowledge it. Minimal government = less opportunity for corruption in the first place. Big government = inevitable corruption.

LOL. You think? The government of this country was setup the way it was on the principle that it was INEVITABLE that government becomes corrupt. I hate going back to the Constitution as an excuse – but the Federal government was supposed to have some pretty severely restricted powers. Other pieces of the puzzle – like Senators appointed by state governments – and a militia and armament protected by that Constitution – as well as another amendment protecting your right to call out the goverment when it screws up – all revolve around the fact that corrupt people are attracted… Read more »

It’s not just government – it’s academia, the media, the police, the military… when once-honorable ‘callings’ become offensive to the normal, decent human being, those callings will still be out there, waiting to be filled, with the perqs and salaries that go with them. The system requires that all these positions be filled; when decent people turn away in disgust, it just means that more ‘flexible’ people will step in.

Corruption is part of the life-cycle of all organizations. We see it in large-scale business too; it isn’t specifically a government thing.

I think the issue is this silly idea that the FBI is an independent entity. Most of the crazy stuff we’re seeing coming out of there and out of the DOJ is because the bureaucrats in the permanent government think they work “for the American people”. That’s pretty convenient sanctimony, because “the American people” cannot fire them. But the President can, and he should. Sure, he might collect a few innocent scalps, but the greater good is served by re-establishing the chain of command in the Executive Branch. Those clowns have gotten away with murder for decades, but nobody reigns… Read more »

Ever since this began, I have wondered how much difference a relatively few people in the right places can do, can they remove a President? I have been watching old films about the JFK murder, and I believe that with the media on your side you can indeed remove a President right in front of the public eye, but you also need the FBI. They are involved with every political disaster before the bombs or rifles go off .

The 2012 election is one that has always puzzled me. Romney was an unappealing candidate, but re-elections are a referendum on the incumbent. Historical data all pointed to a narrow Obama loss. The polling always seemed a bit dodgy, despite what guys like Nate Silver said. His disastrous 2016 suggests he is not the seer everyone insisted. I’m not saying it was rigged. I think it was more a case of extreme collusion between the media, Team Obama and various dirty tricks operators.

Z Man; Yeah. I agree about Romney. His nomination was what convinced me that the National Fusion Party was all too real. I mean, you *know* that he’s a perfect ‘Riche Rich’ target of opportunity for the many red-diaper, soft-marxist Progs. that you know are everywhere in the NGO’s, MSM and Permanent Government. Not only that but you know how he *got* to be vastly more rich than he already was starting out: He ran the Wall St. ‘bust out’ racket on overly complacent, middle-American companies, mostly manufacturing. The class-based, populist attack adds practically write themselves. IOW, he ran as… Read more »

I know it’s easy to say it-and easy to be called a sore loser-but 2012 just reeked of vote fraud to me. I remember all the articles on Drudge and other news sources at the time…. “Voting Precinct has 150% more votes than registered voters” etc. I remember a newscast on CNN… Early Voting in Colorado, Early and Red. Obama ended up winning CO quite comfortably IIRC. Plus there were a few “Colorado county X had more votes than voters” stories in right wing media. I think an honest appraisal would find vote fraud rife in 2012…..more so than usual.

Did you hear his announcement to run for Senate? It’s the battle cry of the Open Borders Brigade, “”Utah welcomes legal immigrants from around the world,” Romney says. “Washington sends immigrants a message of exclusion. And on Utah’s Capitol Hill, people treat one another with respect.”

Same guy who during the 2012 election was talking about border enforcement and illegals “self deporting”.

Total. Snake.

It’s a shame Trump feels like he has to endorse him in order to avoid another Roy Moore debacle.

I tell this story often. In 1994, Romney was running against Kennedy and he had built up a lead. People were sick of Ted. It really looked like Ted was on the ropes, but then the Boston media started thumping on Romney and he started to melt. You could see the choke coming, leading up to the first debate. I was in a restaurant on the North Shore that night and everyone crowded into the bar to see the opening of the debate. Immediately, Romney went full cuck. It was if he started to shrink and Kennedy started to grow.… Read more »

ZMan, I love your blog, but to think MA would vote out Fat Boy Kennedy is simply delusional. I’m guessing your NS restaurant was on the “far” North Shore where the vanishing WASP remnant resides, hence the anti-Kennedy animus. Mitt lost his chance with “Romneycare” (which eats over 40% of the Commonwealth’s budget).

Before the debate, polling had it a tie race and Kennedy had rocket high negatives. This was state that had no qualms about electing Bill Weld, so people at the time thought the winds of change were going to blow Fat Drunk Ted off the stage. You forget that in the previous year he had turned up drunk at speaking events. Romney was a sober, ever so slightly right of Ted alternative. After the debate, Romney’s polls collapsed.

As to RomneyCare, that came along almost ten years after the Senate race, so it played no role.

I know that Romneycare played no role in the election, just as an example of Mitt having no “fight” in him. He always viewed the gov’ship as a way to boost his national visibility. To be fair to him and to Charlie, there are just too few republicans to put up a meaningful resistance to the dems. I do wonder if JoeJoeJoe was hurt by that speech he gave after the SOTU? Time will tell.

As an accidental witness to the behind-the-scenes shenanigans used to entrap one of the Republican Congressmen who has suddenly decided to “retire” this time around, I can tell you that IMO they are all compromised. The wheeling and dealing that is a part of becoming a congressman is quietly used against them to leverage them into cooperation with the powers-that-be. I think too many of them, especially the Republicans, have realized that all of this stuff will be coming out in the next few months or years, so they are all getting out while the getting is good. Of course,… Read more »

Strzok was the head of counterintelligence for the FBI. It is almost unbelievable that a person in this position would use a government-issued cell phone to say the things he did in his 50K texts with Page. Between stupid and arrogant, I say arrogance. This applies to the whole gang. With Obama, Holder, the msm, Hollywood and academia on their side for eight years, they came to believe that we were a nation of men, not laws, that they were apparatchiks or nomenklatura who could do and say anything they wanted to advance party power and destroy political enemies. It… Read more »

Never underestimate the attraction of texting your lover the things that get her all hot and bothered about you. As was pointed out in an earlier thread, a counterintelligence person should never, ever let his snake out of his pants except for his wifee at home.

There’s also the little problem of the chief of counterintelligence breaking the #1 rule of espionage: sex and blackmail make excellent weapons. His extramarital affair with Page – while investigating Clinton’s ILLEGAL “private” email server – is just one of the most stupidly baffling abuses of power in recent history. How could he lead an investigation into Hillary’s ILLEGAL security practices when he, himself, was engaged in activities that even the most green recruit is taught never to do. It was a total violation of his oath. Strzok possessed the two most important elements of a criminal act: motive and… Read more »

I just saw an interview with Roger Stone and the story he told about J. Edgar Hoover’s meeting with newly elected President Nixon. He showed him photos of Nixon’s liaison with his Chinese mistress in China. Don’t worry Mr. President, these photos are safe with me.

I know, lot of similar stories with Hoover but just a reminder this corruption goes back a ways.

David; Considering that the source here is the GOPe’s version of Sid Vicious and Cody Shearer, a bit of skepticism is in order. Not that the story couldn’t be true, mind you. Reasons for skepticism: – Stone (who was originally a Nixon loyalist) specifically says that it happened in China. After the 1949 commie takeover, nobody but vouched commies could get into China before Nixon became president. This leaves only a thin slice of time before Nixon stopped being a Naval Officer in 1946(?) and before he became a Congressmen in 1948. – China was in the midst of a… Read more »

Like I wrote here a few weeks ago when that Nunes memo came out, guys like Flynn and Pappadapolous have a very good case to rescind their plea agreements based on what we now know about the FBI investigation. I don’t think a truth and reconciliation commission would work. What needs to happen is a prosecution of several high government officials (I would start with Comey, McCabe, and Strzok along with Ohr and Milner) on charges of Public Corruption or maybe even Racketeering since the “solution” (criminal investigations of Trump by Trump opponents) would not exist if Trump’s opponents had… Read more »

The big stumbling block for a truth and reconciliation commission is that the idea presupposes good faith, and Democrats are sewer rats. They fight like sewer rats, and that’s how they’ll go down. They would only try to game a truth and reconciliation commission for their advantage. The Left owns the Federal bureaucracy:

This. Go read that Milner op-ed in the WaPost. In it, he comes clean that he was the conduit from Sydney Blumenthal at the Clinton Campaign into the State Department. And, although he doesn’t say it this way, his primary role was not just to feed that information into the bureaucracy, but to SANITIZE it. He writes in the Op-Ed that he basically rewrote the reports he read from memory. Why would he do that? Because, like money laundering, Blumenthal needed an air-gap between the Clinton Campaign and the DOS/DOJ/FBI. When Milner rewrote the reports in his own words, it… Read more »

Truth & Reconciliation is only going to be a beginning. The sheer volume of malfeasance/corruption & moral bankruptcy will be staggering.

Then we’re going to need a ‘sorting hat’ process to decide who can be a useful cube-holder and a massive recruit & sort for people of competence & minimal ‘ethics’.

Statutes of Limitations are going to be expired for way too many perps. Pensions will still be obligated. Too bad the magic pensions can’t be ‘liened’ on/devalued … That would get serious attention of the #MeLiedToo!! crew….

I think it’s going to take some high profile public executions (by which I mean prosecutions and jail time) to shake this loose. We might get a few of the good guys in the process, but if we kill off 100 bad guys for every 3-4 good guys, we’re making progress.

I agree. The everlasting ‘revelations’ aren’t enough; they only reach (at most) half the public, and of that half, at best a tenth has the time and the attention span and the gift for nuance to follow all of this foulness down to the sewers.

Roll out the guillotine in Dupont Circle, and start chopping off heads. Then the vast and amorphous ‘American people’ will wake up and notice that something is going on, that all is not well in the imperial city.

I don’t see any reason to reconcile with people that have been proven so untrustworthy. South Africa could pull this off because for all its flaws the Apartheid state was fundamentally principled, not necessarily in ways you or I share but they had a core ideology they believed in Our current leaders are rootless, amoral globalists and while I’d be happy to see them slink into the night never to bother us again in order to avoid something worse, I’m not sure it will happen I suspect the American people will have to do the unthinkable at some point quite… Read more »

Commissions are like committees. They generate a lot of words and a lot of paper but rarely any good results. They often become immortal. I would instead recommend killing a chicken to scare the monkeys. Discover who murdered Seth Rich and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.

Here’s my nomination: Cody Shearer, Hillary’s dirty trickster par excellence. He’s been lurking in the shadows since forever, but I have NEVER seen a photo of him, even during “Clinton Time” in the ’90s. That would make him the perfect one to get to li’l Seth without raising any suspicion, esp at 3 AM. My question also is, if the bar that Seth was at shut at 1:30, or at least that’s when SR left the premises, what was going on for several hours before he was shot on the sidewalk, then taken to the hospital — still alive. He… Read more »

But the risk/reward ratio was very high. It looked very likely that Hillary would win, hence risk was low. But at the same time if you were the one to bring Trump down…. the rewards could have been enormous.

The complicity and dereliction of the major media in enabling and assisting in this crime spree is not to minimized. The DC corruption is so pervasive that the remaining good guys were effectively compromised or intimidated into surrendering. And this was more than just malfeasance and criminality, it was an actual real-life attempted coup d e´tat right here in the good ol’ USA. The checks and balances did NOT work, it was the election that changed course.

Possibly your best to date, Zman. With regard to your closing paragraph, the first thing that came to my mind was . . . REPENTANCE – the reciprocation of giving/receiving “forgiveness”. For those of the Christian faith, REDEMPTION is “elemental” – the keystone. Who would be willing to “forgive” career criminals the likes of the Hildabeast, Soros, SICK Chaney, GHW Bush, Eric[the race-baiter]Holder and now Robert[the Clinton mule]Mueller/Adam[piece of]Schiff – just to mention a few of the more “notables”? Such is a real struggle for me but, when considering that RESTITUTION – according to One’s ability – is the second… Read more »

I had no idea this organization existed, and a lot of the Obama Admin holdover FBI skinks and members of the Mueller Team are charter members.

What I do think is interesting in light of the high level FBI and DOJ resignations and reassignments coming fast and hard is the speculation that Mueller somehow got flipped and purposely corralled these bad actors to keep them from doing any more damage.

Gen Flynn pleaded guilty to a process crime. The Flynn family has suffered greatly. The Feds can ruin innocent men, see Ted Stevens. Judge Sullivan, a Democratic appointment and an old time straight shooter, has ordered all documents concerning Flynns’ agreement turned over to him. Unusual move by a judge. A very clear signal the judge thinks the prosecution is dirty. Mueller postponed Flynns’ sentencing for a reason. Flynns’ conviction will be thrown out. BTW Judge Sullivan tossed Ted Stevens’ conviction and lambasted the prosecution, in writing, in a very pointed way.